The New York Times has published a wonderful piece written by American actor Stephen Tobolowsky about the nature and the function of a character actor.A character actor is supposed to be the actor everybody knows the face but ignores the name. Stephen Tobolowsky quotes actor and writer Larry Miller: "The definition of a character actor is anyone in the movie not kissing Renée Zellweger."
« I am a character actor: the perfect combination of ubiquity and anonymity, » writes Stephen. And evoking the names of Kevin McCarthy, Carl Gordon, Maury Chaykin, James Gammon and Harold Gould, he adds: « There is one thing that Kevin, Carl, Maury, James, Harold, Larry and I have in common: we have all played parts that didn’t have names. »
Read that great piece written with all the intelligence, the humour and the sensibility of one of the most brilliant and interesting contemporary American actors. You can also hear Stephen Tobolowsky in The Tobolowsky Files, a podcast series of stories about "life, love, and the entertainment industry".
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/opinion/17tobolowsky.html
http://www.slashfilm.com/category/features/slashfilmcast/the-tobolowsky-files/
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